"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen

"There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."
— Jane Austen

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!"
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"You must know... surely, you must know it was all for you. You are too generous to trifle with me. I believe you spoke with my aunt last night, and it has taught me to hope as I'd scarcely allowed myself before. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense."
— Jane Austen

"Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort."
— Jane Austen

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."
— Jane Austen

"In vain have I struggled but it will not do, my feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you, how much I love and admire you."
— Jane Austen

"Angry people are not always wise."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"do you really think he likes me lizzi?"
"jane, he danced with you most of the night and stared at you the rest of it."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you."
— Jane Austen (Persuasion)

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other."
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language"
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like."
— Jane Austen

"Perhaps it it our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another!"
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Captain Wentworth to Anne Elliot"
— Jane Austen (Persuasion)

"The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone."
— Jane Austen (Love and Friendship: And Other Early Works)

"Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody. "
— Jane Austen

"What strange creatures brothers are!"
— Jane Austen

"In vain I have struggled. It will not do! My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you... Almost from the earliest moments of your acquaintance, I have come to feel for you a passionate admiration and regard, which despite my struggles, has overcome every rational objection. And I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Life seems nothing more than a quick succession of busy nothings."
— Jane Austen

"From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!"
— Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)

"A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."
— Jane Austen

"'It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.'"
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

""...but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short." "
— Jane Austen

"Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."
— Jane Austen

"Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way."
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of a man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire... Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control. "
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all."
— Jane Austen

"Sometimes the last person on earth you want to be with is the one person you can't be without."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"When I fall in love, it will be forever."
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken."
— Jane Austen

"My idea of good company. . . is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation."
— Jane Austen

"Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how."
— Jane Austen

"I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve."
— Jane Austen

"I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do."
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."
— Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)

"To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."
— Jane Austen